From the Salon article linked by @DavidNRockies :
“Yes, the tape is terrible evidence against Trump, but the real story is he is challenging to be the worst client of eternity for any criminal defense attorney because he gives real time admissions rather than keeping his mouth (Truths) shut while his attorneys do their job,” Lieb said. “It’s almost like he wants to be convicted.”
Got it. Thanks.
Relevant to the topic: who was it that was standing there to fetch cokes? Olbermann speculated that it was Walt Natua.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were more broadsides to come. With Smith pushing a trial back to December, he accomplishes two things: first, that there are additional months during which Trump can stew, fume, worry, and Truth things he shouldn’t; and second, that Smith and his team have a few broadsides left to disclose over a longer period of time. At any rate, Trump’s team cannot complain that the time frame is too short to craft a competent defence.
I also would not be surprised if Trump took to Truth to post some remarks about Wiles and “something-something disloyalty.”
NEVER MET HER. NOT MY TYPE. PERSON MAN WOMAN TV CAMERA. Seriously, the various prosecutors are going to have to meet to schedule press conferences to announce charges.
The recording would seem to be a slam-dunk on this issue, but I don’t think it’s essential.
Trump was told on multiple occasions that he had to return these documents, and he went out of his way, on multiple occasions, to not do that very thing. I think this alone establishes that he “wilfully” retained the documents. Just because he didn’t believe the government officials, and his own lawyers, he shouldn’t be able to avoid this charge. It’s like resisting arrest. Even if you think the charge you’re being arrested for is bogus, that doesn’t give you the right to start fighting with the cops. You’re expected to argue that issue before the courts, not with the cops on the street.
It is too short a time to come up with a competent defence. TBH, eternity is too short a time as well.
Of course, you’d never become a Mafia boss in the first place if you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. Trump got to where he is by riding the coattails of his rich father. The Mafia seems to be a far more merit-based organization than the Trump family.
There has to be a point (doesn’t there?) where the defense throws up their hands and says “We’ve got nothing.”
That’s effectively what they did in the Jean Carroll case. No defence offered. And then they lost.
I agree but what do you think is more compelling?
“The defendant was told the documents were classified and couldn’t be shared.”
“The defendant said the documents were classified and couldn’t be shared.”
I can’t help but wonder what Trump thought or knew about Susie Wiles’s business connections.
It reminds me of this story:
I have to simply guess that Trump’s mindset was: If they’re okay with the Secret Service, that’s good enough for me.
Meaning: I can say or do anything I please around them (because they’ve been cleared).
But I’d imagine that the US Secret Service uses a different standard than Jack Smith might use in evaluating the use or dissemination of National Defense Information.
And I’d imagine that Smith’s team is covering this in an exhaustive fashion.
We are all pretty much publicly aware, at this point, of people who are at least thought to have been shown sensitive material by Trump. I presume we don’t know them all.
And that’s before we start to understand what Mar-A-Lago invitees may have gotten to see, either with or without Trump’s explicit consent.
I’ve heard nothing further about the ‘evaluation of documents for touch DNA,’ but would be curious if that bore fruit.
I mean … Kanye West shows up with three strangers? Nothing about that sounds particularly good.
Ahhhhh… I think I introduced this notion early in the thread. As the case has developed, I doubt the cost for this was justified. They appear to have everything they need from just where the evidence was found and witness testimony.
My bad.
I think it’s an important distinction that a conviction of breaking the Espionage Act would require that he willfully retained the documents, but not necessarily that he knew that doing so was against the law. Right?
Wrong.
As shared earlier by @DavidNRockies:
Critically, not just any retention of NDI is illegal. Section 793(e) only punishes a defendant who unlawfully retains NDI “willfully.” Willful retention is not accidental, negligent, or reckless. Rather, a defendant only retains NDI willfully if he or she knows he or she possesses it and knows that such possession is prohibited due to the nature of the information. See, e.g. , United States v. Hitselberger , 991 F. Supp.2d 101, 106-07 (D. D.C. 2013).
Knowledge is a prerequisite to find someone guilty.
It sounds like lawyers are just like physicists, it’s all about job security. They make the world so complicated so that we need them in order to understand it.
To be fair, physicists don’t make the world complicated – it already is complicated by itself. You can explain things in a way so that it’s opaque or so that it can be widely understood. Run-of-the-mill physicists and teachers do the former. Great teachers and physicists do the latter.
But there is a certain, irreducible level of complexity below which you can’t go. Despite the appearance of books with titles like Quantum Physics for Babies, you really do have to know some calculus for Schroedinger’s equation and the like, and wrap your head around some complex paradoxes to even try to understand Quantum. Most kids have to be at least five.
I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t speak to whether they are refusing to make things simple in the name of Job Security, but I suspect that centuries of laboring to rehash definitions, clarity, and fairness might make even a purely human creation about as complex as Mother Nature does.
Probably true, but even the mediocre physicists are still trying to make it understood.
I sometimes wonder if it might be easier if we started teaching quantum mechanics from infancy. Certainly, there are some physics concepts that pre-schoolers understand better than college students, because they haven’t had a chance to learn otherwise yet (such as the fact that the image produced by a flat mirror is behind the mirror, not at its surface).
He’s got a new excuse now. Because FOX is being mean to him. Ring Of Fire (4:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMNNJ2dDSGA
Stephanie Grisham, the former White House communications director and press secretary during his administration, claims she witnessed him showing off a few of the top-secret papers to Mar-a-Lago guests.
“I watched him show documents to people at Mar-a-Lago on the dining room patio. So, he has no respect for classified information. Never did,”